Conversation started in the GDT, moved here and refined by me.
What do you, as a coach, do with Kevin Bieksa? Keeping in mind that we are probably stuck with him. We are being hurt by overaggressive play, whether that be through ill-advised pinches or poor passes.
Do you try to staple him to the blue line and mandate that he play conservatively? But that takes away from what used to be his strength, and he kind of has always played that way. The problem now is that he's slowing down and not able to execute on those high-risk plays as much any more.
Similarly, if you try to bench him and make him watch tape and use it as a learning experience, again it's trying to teach a guy something to do something that he hasn't really done historically.
Do you put him with a guy who can cover for him? And that may be on the 2nd pair if we get a solid 2nd pairing guy (Lindholm was supposed to be that, but he hasn't been) or on the 3rd pair to limit the mistakes.
One thing I wonder is if getting Bieksa was a conscientious move to try to deal with the already-decided loss of Vatanen. Basically Bob decided ahead of time that he wasn't going to keep Vatanen, so he got Bieksa to try to fill that role. Because he surely couldn't have expected that Bieksa would actually fill the Beauchemin role of being a solid defensive guy, could he? It almost makes sense, because sans Vatanen we don't really have an offensive guy.